Netherlands Visa Status: How to Track It & Why It's Slow

Short answer: check your Netherlands visa status on the VFS Netherlands tracker with the receipt number VFS gave you (slashes included). It will say “under process” for most of the wait, and that status doesn't change until your passport is on its way back. To see whether the embassy has reached your application date, look up your date on the Netherlands visa tracker.

Right now: Netherlands visas from India are taking about 41 days from the VFS appointment to the passport being sent back. Applications from 8–10 Sept are mostly out (updated 20 Oct 2026). If you applied after that, your status saying “under process” is normal.

How to check your Netherlands visa status

Open the VFS Netherlands tracking page and click “track your visa application status online”. The form's heading should say “Apply For Visa to The Netherlands In India”. A generic VFS page or another country's form will call your number invalid.
Enter the number on your VFS receipt exactly as printed, for example NLD/DEL/280826/0123/01, plus your last name. Not the NEDL code from the online form, and not your passport number.
Families: each person has their own number ending 01, 02, 03. Check each one separately.

Stuck on “invalid input” or the verification words? Our step-by-step VFS tracking guide covers the usual traps.

What each status means

Received at the Visa Application Centre: VFS has your passport. Same day as your appointment and biometrics.
Forwarded to / under process at the embassy: the Dutch embassy has your file. This is where you'll spend almost the whole wait, and the status stays exactly the same until the decision is made. More on “under process”.
Processed passport received / dispatched: the decision is made and your passport is coming back. VFS doesn't say whether the visa was granted; you find out when you open the envelope.

The VFS page is often a day or two behind. Your passport appears on Blue Dart the evening it leaves VFS: take the receipt number, drop the slashes (NLDDEL280826012301) and search it on Blue Dart.

How long “under process” lasts at each VFS centre

The clock starts at your VFS appointment, the day you give biometrics, not the day you booked it. The wait isn't the same everywhere:

Today the quickest centre is Lucknow at about 24 days, and the slowest is Jalandhar at about 45 days: a gap of 21 days for the same visa.

VFS centre	Mostly out up to	Wait right now
Lucknow	25 Sept	about 24 days
Pune	11–16 Sept	about 38 days
Mumbai	10–15 Sept	about 39 days
Hyderabad	10–14 Sept	about 39 days
Kochi	10–14 Sept	about 39 days
Chennai	9–11 Sept	about 40 days
Ahmedabad	9–11 Sept	about 40 days
Delhi	8–10 Sept	about 41 days
Bangalore	7–9 Sept	about 42 days
Kolkata	7–9 Sept	about 42 days
Chandigarh	4 Sept	about 45 days
Jalandhar	4–8 Sept	about 45 days

“Mostly out up to”: the latest application dates most of whose passports have been sent back by Blue Dart. Centres with too few passports for a figure are left out.

Why Netherlands visas are slow right now

Three things show up in the passports we see coming back:

The summer backlog. July and August were the busiest months we've tracked, and in late August the embassy was sending back only around 175 passports a working day. A queue built up that is still being worked through.
It is speeding up. In September the embassy roughly doubled that, to 300–450 a day. The wait shrinks when it keeps finishing more applications than arrive, so dates move faster than the “about N days” figure alone suggests. Watch whether the tracker's “mostly out” date jumps more than a day at a time.
Where you applied matters. As the table above shows, some centres' dates come out weeks ahead of others for the same visa. About one in four Netherlands passports comes out noticeably before the bulk of its date. We can see when they come out, but not why.

For comparison, right now Germany is taking about 10 days, France is taking about 10 days, Switzerland is taking about 19 days, Italy is taking about 26 days. At about 41 days, the Netherlands is slower than all of them. Every country, compared.

My date is out but my passport isn't

“Mostly out” means most, not all. For the Netherlands, most of the rest of a date follows within a couple of working days, and the slowest tenth takes about a week more. If you're a week past your date and still waiting, check Blue Dart first (VFS lags), then ask in the discussion on the tracker, where other applicants from your week compare notes.

Bottom line

Your VFS status won't tell you how close you are. Find your application date on the Netherlands visa tracker (or your centre's page from the table above), save it to your home screen, and check Blue Dart once your date is mostly out. For how long to plan before travelling, see Netherlands visa processing time from India.